From Mariah Blake, for Mother Jones, the story of “energy diplomacy” that promotes drilling in foreign countries. An excerpt: “Clinton then sent a cable to US diplomats, asking them to collect information on the potential for fracking in their host countries. These efforts eventually gave rise to the Global Shale Gas Initiative, which aimed to help other nations develop their ...
From Joseph Sorrentino, for In These Times and The Santa Fe Reporter, an investigation of working conditions at diaries in New Mexico. Workers routinely work overtime without extra pay, and are subjected to dirty, dangerous conditions. But since most New Mexico dairy workers are undocumented immigrants, they are afraid to complain. Sorrentino tells the story of a worker who, despite ...
From Wallace Roberts, for The Crisis Magazine, an investigation of the demise of nursing homes serving poor and minority neighborhoods, due to historic underfunding rooted in Jim Crow decision-making. Roberts probes the case of the Lemington Home for the Aged, a microcosm for a national problem. The Pittsburgh home, a long-standing community-based institution, closed after a death investigation found chronic ...
From Joseph Mazige, for Munno Voice of Uganda, an investigation of newly developed oil fields, which have failed to meet expectations for reducing joblessness and poverty. Instead, the oil companies provide good jobs for skilled foreign citizens but offer local residents positions as guards and laborers. Local business owners also complain they are denied service contracts; the foreign oil firms do ...
A joint investigation by the Student Press Law Center and The Columbus Dispatch casts serious doubts on the accuracy of crime reports sent by colleges to the U.S. Department of Education. An overwhelming number of colleges report no sexual assaults, or no violent crimes at all, each year. The investigative team documented crimes – including the report of a gang ...
For WAMU-FM, Patrick Madden reports on District of Columbia contractors who contribute to local politicians – who have the final say over contracts worth $1 million or more. Madden took a deep dive into campaign contributions and found the tight control over contracts by City Council members has spawned a “Pay to Play” culture in DC government. Madden and the team ...
From Moonshine Ink, an investigation of public funds drained for a hospital expansion in a small California town and an “all-in-the-family” consultant contract that is an apparent conflict of interest. Reporter David Bunker finds that public funding of the hospital district does not clearly benefit patients. “The billing and care at Tahoe Forest Hospital is similar to a private hospital ...
From Estacios Valoi for Oxpeckers, findings of official complicity in the slaughter of elephants – which has become “industrial” in scale in northern Mozambique. “The killing of elephants in the north of Mozambique is reaching proportions never seen before,” an advisor to the World Conservation Society told Valoi. Their ivory tusks are then smuggled across borders, mainly to China and ...
For “Making Contact” and KBOO-FM – Portland, Barbara Bernstein has produced the radio documentary “Fighting Goliath,” exploring the environmental protest in the Pacific Northwest over proposed industrial trucking corridors for heavy mining equipment. The equipment “mega-loads” were headed to Canada and the sites of the controversial Tar Sands mines, one step in the process of exploiting Canadian oil resources for American gas tanks, if ...
For Info-Afrique.com, reporter Christian Locka reports that a contractor working for the leading palm oil corporation in Cameroon dumped human excrement in the Mboma river, polluting water used for drinking and cooking water. The company, formerly owned by the state, is now owned by a French businessman. Land has been taken to make way for the palm oil farms, and graveyards, ...